"I suspect it's a human characteristic not to know when you're well off," I said.
He glanced at me sidewise. "Oh, it is," he said. "I see it every day."
I laughed, wrapped an arm around him, and we went back to the Cannon house to a meal of broiled fish, boiled potatoes, Brussels sprouts, and baked apples. The Cannon house sits on a large lot, and, like Bankole and I, the Cannons raise much of their own food. What they can't raise, they buy from local farmers or fishermen. They're also part of a cooperative that evaporates salt for their own use and for sale. But unlike us, they use few wild foods or seasonings—no acorns, cactus fruit, mint, manzanita, not even pine nuts. Surely there will be new foods in Siberia. Would they learn to eat them or would they cling to whatever they could grow or buy of their bland familiar foods?
"Sometimes I can't stand the thought of leaving this house," Thea Cannon said as we sat eating. "But there'll be more opportunity for the children when we leave. What is there for them here?"
I'm not so pregnant that most people notice, and I do wear loose clothing now. But I did think that Thea Cannon, who has seven kids of her own, would have noticed. Maybe she's just too wrapped up in her own worries. She's a plump, pretty, tired-looking blond woman in her forties, and she always seems a little distracted—as though she has a lot on her mind.
That night, I lay awake beside Bankole, listening to the sounds of the sea and the wind. They're good sounds as long as you don't have to be outside. Back at Acorn, being on watch during rough weather is no joke.
"The mayor tells me the town is willing to hire you to replace one of their teachers," Bankole said, his mouth near my ear and his hand on my stomach where he likes to rest it. "They've got one teacher who's in her late fifties and one who's 79. The older one has been wanting to retire for years. When I told them that you had pretty much set up the school at Acorn and that you taught there, they almost cheered."
"Did you tell them that all I've got is a high school education, a lot of reading, and the courses I audited on my father's computer?"
"I told them. They don't care. If you can help their kids learn enough to pass the high school equivalency tests, they'll figure you've earned your pay. And by the way, they can't actually pay you much in hard currency, but they're willing to let you go on living in the house and raising food in the garden even after I'm dead."
I moved against him, but managed not to say anything. I hate to hear him always talking about dying.
"Aside from the older teacher," he continued, "no one around here has a teaching credential. The older people who do have college degrees do not want second or third careers teaching school. Just install some reading, writing, math, history, and science in these kids' heads, and everyone will be happy. You should be able to do it in your sleep after what you've had to put up with in Acorn."
"In my sleep," I said. "That sounds like one definition of life in hell."
He took his hand off my stomach.
"This place is wonderful," I said. "And I love you for trying to provide it for the baby and me. But there's nothing here but existence. I can't give up Acorn and Earthseed to come here and install a dab of education into kids who don't really need me."
"Your child will need you."
"I know."
He said nothing more. He turned over and lay with his back to me. After a while I slept. I don't know whether he did.
************************************
Later, back at home, we didn't talk much. Bankole was angry and unforgiving. He has not yet said a firm "No" to the people of Halstead. That troubles me. I love him and I believed he loves me, but I can't help knowing that he could settle in Halstead without me. He's a self-sufficient man, and he truly believes he's right. He says I'm being childish and stubborn.
Marc agrees with him, by the way, not that either of us has asked Marc what he thinks. But he's still staying with us, and he can't help hearing at least some of our disagreement. He could have avoided mixing in, but I don't think that ever occurred to him.
"What's the matter with you?" he demanded of me this morning just before Gathering. "Why do you want to have a baby in this dump? Just think, you could live in a real house in a real town."
And I got so angry so fast that my only choices were either to be very quiet or to scream at him. He, of all people should have known better than to say such a thing. We had reached out from our dump with money made at our dump. We had found him and freed him. But for us and our dump, he would still be a slave and a whore!
"Come to Gathering," I said in almost a whisper. And I walked out of the house away from him.
He followed me to Gathering, but he never apologized. I don't think he ever realized that he had said something vile.
After Gathering, Gray Mora came up to me and said, "I hear you're leaving."
I was surprised. I don't suppose I should have been. Bankole and I don't scream at one another and broadcast our troubles the way the Figueroas and the Faircloths do, but no doubt it's clear to everyone that there's something wrong between us. And then there was Marc. He might tell people— just out of a need to be important. He does have a consuming need to be important, to reassert his manhood.
"I'm not leaving," I told Gray.
He frowned. "You sure? I heard you were moving to Halstead."
"I'm not leaving."
He drew in a long breath and let it out. "Good. This place would probably go to hell without you." And he turned and walked away. That was Gray. I thought back when he joined us that he might be trouble, or that he wouldn't stay. Instead, he turned out to be dependability itself—as long as you didn't want a lot of conversation or demonstrative friendliness. If you were loyal to Gray and his family, he was loyal to you.
Later, after dinner, Zahra Balter pulled me out of a set of dramatic readings that three of the older kids were giving of their own work or of published work that they liked. I was enjoying Gray's stepdaughter Tori Mora's reading of some comic poetry that she had written. The more laughter in Acorn, the better. And I was drawing Tori, tall and lean and angular, a handsome girl rather than a pretty one. I had discovered that drawing was so different from everything else I did that it relaxed me, and at the same time, it roused me to a new alertness—a new kind of alertness. I've begun to perceive color and texture, line and shape, light and shadow with new intensity. I go into these focused, trancelike states and draw really terrible stuff. My friends laugh at the drawings, but they tell me they're getting better, getting recognizable. Zahra told me a couple of weeks ago that a drawing I'd done of Harry looked almost human.
But this time Zahra hadn't come to talk about my drawing.
"So you're going to leave!" she hissed at me as soon as we were alone. She looked angry and bitter. Here and there around us, people found their own Gathering Day amusements. May was teaching Mercy Noyer how to weave a small basket from tree bark. A few adults and older kids had gotten a soccer game going in spite of the cold. Marc and Jorge were out there on opposite sides, having a great time running up and down the field, getting filthy, and collecting more than their share of bruises. Travis, who also loves soccer, has said, "I think those two would kill each other for a chance to score."
If only Marc would confine himself to scoring in soccer.
Of course, I wasn't as surprised at Zahra's question as I had been at Gray's. "Zee, I'm not leaving," I said.
Like Gray, she didn't believe me at first "I heard you were. Your brother said... Lauren, tell me the truth!"